The Best Bridge Between Despair and Hope
by Waldo
Summary: After five days of constant battle, you’d think sleep would come easier. (Post "33" story)


** Title**: The Best Bridge Between Despair and Hope  
**Author**: Waldo. (Kwaldo12)  
**Rating**: PG-13 Pairing: Lee/Kara  
**Spoilers**: Mini and 33  
**Summary**: After five days of constant battle, you'd think would come easier.

**The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.**

**--Anonymous**

**"He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence "**

**--William Dean Howells**

The Best Bridge Between Despair and Hope

By: Waldo.

She knew she was staggering, but couldn't seem to get any better control of her body. She'd lost Apollo somewhere along the way, and it disturbed her that she couldn't remember when. All she knew was that when she'd climbed out of her Viper he was there, and now he wasn't. She had a vague memory of the commander being on the deck when they'd landed and of him explaining to them that they were fairly sure that the fleet would be able to stand down for a while after the next jump. Then there was the vaguely disorienting feeling of the jump and the commander had smiled. She'd felt like throwing up. It struck her as odd. Jumps had never bothered her before. In fact she liked to ride Cally whenever she could about the mechanic's dislike for the sudden stomach-dropping lurch into hyperspace.

She was beginning to think that someone had moved her bunkroom. It had never been so far from the hangar before. She stopped for a moment to check behind her, to see if maybe Lee had only ended up a few steps behind. He wasn't there. She shrugged and started moving again. The commander had dismissed her from the deck and told her to hit her rack. They were establishing a regular C.A.P., so that everyone could get some rest now that they seemed to have ditched the Cylons. At least for a while.

She was exhausted. She knew that. Five days with no more than fifteen-minute catnaps – usually through one of Apollo's briefings or debriefings – was starting to catch up with her. She ran her fingers through dirty hair and grimaced at how gross she felt in general. There had been thirty-three-minute pauses between Cylon battles, but even with Combat Landings, the pilots were lucky to get 20 minutes out-of-the-cockpit time each cycle. It was enough time to use the head, maybe eat something and stop fighting their eyelids for five or ten minutes. She'd shoved her head under a cold tap a few times to try and wake herself up, but she knew how desperately she needed a real shower.

She found herself staring at the sorry sight in her locker mirror with no memory of opening the hatch to her quarters or of opening her locker. She glanced over to her bed and decided she couldn't possibly climb into her clean sheets in her current condition. She grabbed her shower bag off the hook at the back of her locker, hung up her flightsuit and made for the head.

She turned on the spray as hot as it would go and turned up the pressure until she could barely stand it. The water felt wonderful against her face and she grabbed her soap and cleaned herself three times just to be sure and then washed her hair twice, scrubbing her scalp with her fingernails until she was relatively sure it would be back to being blonde when it dried. Necessities taken care of she turned her face back into the spray and just let it wash over her. Bed sounded good. She got a mental image of her room – nineteen other pilots in various states of milling around and getting into their racks for the night. The lights would be down to half in deference to those who'd already turned in and conversation would be at a minimum. That had always been fine with her. She spent most of her rec time in the pilots' ready room playing cards or in the gym or under a Viper. By the time she was ready to turn in, she didn't really want people stopping her to engage her in long conversations.

She hadn't had much family growing up. She thought about her mother as little as possible and she'd lost Zak before he could technically be counted as family. But her squad took care of her and she tried, in turn, to take of them. It was how pilots worked. Especially so far from home for such long stretches.

She had to lean against the wall in order to stay upright when she remembered that the only other person who'd be returning to her quarters that night would be Boomer. She liked Boomer well enough, but the sudden memory that eighteen of the twenty people she'd shared the room with for two years were gone made her feel sick. How could she have forgotten?

The warmth and relaxation of the shower suddenly gone, she wrenched the water off and grabbed her towel. She dried her body and scrubbed the extra water out of her hair, not caring how many directions it was left sticking up in. She pulled on a pair of underwear and a set of tanks and then tossed her towel in the corner hamper.

She took her shower bag and headed for the hatch, but the idea of going back in there – into a room that always held some level of noise – someone snoring, someone mumbling in their sleep, blankets and sheets sliding as someone rolled over – being that quiet unnerved her rather thoroughly.

She walked back over to the sink and ran some cold water. She rinsed her hands off, taking particular notice of the way her body shivered when the water ran over her pulses. She splashed the cold water on her face and neck and chastised herself for not being in bed. It had literally been a week since she'd seen a pillow and even the stims in her system were only going to keep her going for a little bit longer.

She paced the length of the room again and wondered if the meds weren't making her jittery. She'd had five days to get used to the idea that the world had ended and that nothing would ever be the same again. She needed to suck it up and go in there and go to sleep.

She leaned on the sink to stay upright when she had the very unwelcome memory of the last time she'd been afraid to go into her own room to go to sleep. It had been the night her mother had beaten her with a belt until she bled and then thrown her in the front closet with clear orders that she wasn't to be seen for the rest of the night. After a couple of hours she was pretty sure she'd been forgotten, but had been to afraid to try and sneak out to her bedroom for fear that she'd be seen. She'd slept in the closet that night and waited until she heard her mother leave for work before coming out to clean up and go to school. She wondered idly if there was anyone around who would find it odd if she slept in the bathroom that night.

That was how Apollo found her. Standing over the sink, braced on her arms, paler than usual, eyes squeezed against the mental images of her childhood.

His hand between her shoulderblades scared her so badly that she swung around with her fist pulled back, ready to defend herself from both her memories and whoever was sneaking up on her. The stims seemed to choose that moment to start giving out on her, leaving her dizzy and she over calculated as she spun and nearly fell. Lee grabbed her elbows saving her from cracking her head open on the sink.

"Frak!"

Lee bit his lip to keep from smiling. He had no idea she didn't know he was there. No idea that he'd startle her so badly. "Sorry, sorry! I had no idea you hadn't heard me come in. Why aren't you in bed?"

She knew she was looking at him like he was insane, and that he wouldn't understand why. There was no way he could know that the silence of the room was scaring the crap out of her, or that the stims hadn't worn off enough for her to contemplate sleep without having to contemplate the idea of laying in bed and staring at the bunk above hers while the past eight days washed over and very possibly drowned her.

"Kara?"

She shook her head. "Same reason you aren't, I'd imagine – stims haven't given up on me yet."

He was still holding her arms, and one of his thumbs began gently tracing the tattoo on her forearm. He didn't remember her having it the last time he saw her. "And they won't, if you don't stop moving."

Kara sighed and thought about pulling away, but it'd been so long since anyone had touched her other than to restrain her that even this little touch was too much to give up. He was looking at her like he expected her to say something. Technically he hadn't asked her a question, so she didn't have to say anything, but those eyes… He was worried. It had also been a long time since anyone had worried about her.

"It's so quiet in there. Boomer's the only one left, and she…" Kara stopped and chose her words carefully. She would not be the cause of anyone losing the comfort of being close to someone they loved. "She's probably not going to come back tonight either."

Lee nodded. He thought about asking where Boomer would have gotten off to, but there was something in Kara's demeanor that said that she didn't really want to talk about that. "Fine. Give me two minutes to shower and I'll crash in there with you. I need to claim a bunk anyway."

Kara's pride flared up before she could stop it. She yanked her arms away from him. "I don't need a babysitter."

Smiling softly, Lee put his arms around her shoulders, one hand going up to cradle the back of her head. "I know. And that's not how I meant it. But I understand that you don't want to be in there alone. Okay?"

She sniffled and let her head drop to his chest. "Sorry. I don't know why I yelled like that."

Lee simply took the stims container out of his flightsuit pocket and shook it next to her ear. She nodded and finally let her hands come up to hug him back. "Right." She sniffled again before pulling back.

"Okay now?" he pushed her back enough to be able to look her in the eyes. They were red and brimming with tears of pain, exhaustion and loss. He figured he didn't look much better.

"As much as any of us are," she answered honestly.

He nodded and hugged her again. "Go crawl in bed. I'll be out in a minute."

She nodded and reluctantly let him go.

Despite wanting to stand in the shower until the Galactica ran out of hot water or he literally couldn't remain upright anymore, he scrubbed off quickly, shaved as well as he could without a mirror in the shower and then put a towel around his waist. He didn't like the idea of leaving Starbuck alone for any longer than necessary. But if she'd let him, he wanted to sleep next to her so she wouldn't feel so alone, and there was no chance of her letting him do that if he didn't get at least a little cleaned up.

She was walking slowly around the perimeter of the room, her fingers trailing over the bunks of her fallen squad. He grabbed his bag off the table and pulled on a pair of boxers under his towel while her back was turned. When he finished pulling on his tanks, she had rounded the corner and was coming towards him. He waited for her to finish her circuit before reaching out to her. "We'll deal with all this later. You need to sleep. We all do. Come on."

She didn't move, just crossed her arms over her chest. "It's so damn quiet. This room was never quiet at night."

Lee nodded. "Where's your bunk?"

She pointed to the lower rack across from where he was standing, but didn't move towards it. He rummaged around in his bag for a second, palming something small before moving to steer her towards it. Her eyes were blank and her movements wooden as if all independent thought had left her head. "Come on," Lee whispered.

He stopped them before the bunk she'd indicated. "This one?" She nodded, but stared at it instead of getting in. "Lay down, Kara." He sat on the edge of her bed and tugged on her arm, pulling the blankets back for her. She sat down and scooted back until her back was against the wall. Lee shifted back to sit next to her. "Remember this?" he passed her the small music chip he'd pulled out his bag. It was an older one, only held about fifteen songs and it was labeled in her handwriting.

"Oh my gods, you still have this?" She took the chip and turned it over in her fingers. "Mine got lost… I don't know three stations ago or so. I think I left it in the unit when I transferred."

Lee took the music chip from her and plugged it into the slot on the wall over her pillow. "My mom's getting married, so she's finally selling the house. I took some leave to help her go clean it out. Weirdly enough, this was in a box of stuff in Zak's room. Maybe it's yours, I don't know." He realized that he still hadn't broken the habit of speaking of people in the present tense.

"We must have listened to these same damn songs a thousand times going back and forth from the academy on leave. Going up to different training sites. Whatever…" She let her head drop back against the bulkhead, listening to the music of their youth. "We were so sure we had all the time in the world then."

Lee nodded, reaching over to take her hand in his. "We certainly never saw our lives changing like this," he allowed. "But we're lucky. We're still here."

"You know… at that funeral… I was pretty sure we were the lucky ones until your dad started talking about how… how now we live with all this… guilt and fear and… Maybe he was talking to me. Maybe I'm one of the ones who thinks maybe they were all the lucky ones."

Lee let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulder. "I don't think you mean that." He tilted her head against his shoulder and ran his hand up and down her arm. "We're beyond tired, Kara. Five days without any real sleep, stims in our systems that won't let us sleep even though we're no longer running at full speed."

She shrugged under his arm. "I don't know. I keep telling myself it'll be better after I've had some sleep, but then I keep thinking that it really won't. Everyone will still be dead, the Cylons will still be out there, we'll still be running…"

Lee just hugged her tighter, not sure what to say. She wasn't reasonable right now. He knew that, so reasoning with her wouldn't help. Maybe he just needed to get her to sleep. "Guess we won't know if things look better once we've had some sleep unless we get some sleep, huh?" He glanced over at her when she didn't answer. She had her hand pressed against her eye and she was biting her lip. "Hey, hey, hey. Come here. It's alright." He pulled her in close. "Swing your legs over, come here." He coaxed her into putting her legs across his so he could pull her closer into his body. "It's okay to cry," he told her quietly into the ear near his lips. "I know you've never been big on having people see you give in to tears, but it's just me." He realized that as he spoke, his own tears had started. "You're not alone," he whispered and buried his face in her hair as he held her even closer. _Not alone in the way you feel, not alone in the room, not alone in what's left of the world_, he promised her silently.

They clung to each other and cried for a long time before Lee felt Kara's muscles start to go soft, her grip becoming less desperate on his shirts. He carefully disentangled her, holding her head until she was lying on her pillow. She opened her eyes halfway as he wiggled out from under her legs and tucked them under the blankets. He leaned down by her, "Kara?" he pushed her hair out her face, "Kara? You want me to lay down here with you or should I grab another rack?"

She looked around the small space of her rack for a second, finally meeting his eyes. "You'd stay?"

He smiled softly at her. "Scoot over."

She shifted around until her back was against the wall and waited while Lee got under the blankets. As he lay down, his head missed the end of the pillow and he made a face. "Want me to grab you a pillow?" she asked with a soft chuckle.

Lee seemed to think about that for a second. "I've got a better idea. Give me yours." She frowned at him. "Come on." She slowly handed over the pillow and he tucked it behind his head. "Now, come here," he slid one arm under her and pulled her over until her head rested on his shoulder. "Okay?"

Kara tucked her arm around his chest and wiggled until she was comfortable. She was back to sleep before she could actually give him an answer. Which was a good enough response for him. Music still playing, he drifted off.

PART II

Lee wasn't sure what woke him, but he knew he hadn't been asleep for more than a couple of hours. There was no way he'd worked off the stims and compensated for more than five days of intense emotion and action and no sleep. He was on his side, back to Kara, but somehow, instinctively, he knew that she was awake. And some odd intuition told him that she may have been for a long while.

He shifted onto his back and turned his head to look at her. The low emergency lighting shone off her eyes. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. "Yeah. Just…" She shrugged again. "I don't know, maybe the stims, maybe I'm just conditioned to jerk wide awake and start running every thirty-three minutes. I don't know," she repeated.

Lee shifted onto his side, facing her, letting one hand rest on her side. "Thinking about stuff?"

"We haven't really had a chance to slow down, let alone stop since the war started. Ended… whatever. Since all of this. We got, what? Nine hours between the time we jumped away from the anchorage and the first Cylon attack. And two of those were spent at a funeral for the whole frakking universe. And yet… none of it seems real, you know?" Kara rolled on her back and covered her face with her hands.

Lee reached up to pull one of her hands down and hold it loosely in his. "Yeah. I know."

"Of course you do. I'm sorry. It's weird. Every once in a while I forget that this is happening to everyone left. That I'm not the only one living with all this… this…"

"Guilt?" Lee guessed. "Fear, depression, uncertainty?" he continued.

Kara just nodded.

"It's not just you," he agreed, "But it _is_ you too. I know you. You hate admitting that anything bothers you. That anything can touch you. Just because you're not the only one grieving, it doesn't mean that you can't grieve."

Kara nodded again against her pillow and pulled her hand away to wipe her cheeks. "I had the damnedest thought a little while ago," she whispered, her voiced choked.

Lee pushed her bangs out of her face, "What?"

"My mom's dead."

Lee sighed heavily. He was fairly sure he was still too tired and at the same time too wired to walk this particular emotional landmine with her. He debated saying as much, but long experience had taught him that if she was shut out once, she wouldn't open up again.

"You haven't seen her since you were fifteen. What makes you think she was still around last week?" He wasn't sure that was the best way to say what he meant, but he was still tired and he knew he wasn't the most tactful person when it came to her even on a good day.

"'Cause I'm just insane enough to have checked the death records every year. On her birthday. I would check to see if she was around to celebrate it." She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, not willing to see the odd look he had to be giving her.

"Oh. Okay." Lee wasn't sure what else there was to say.

"I don't know… part of me knew I'd never look for her. And I was .pretty confident that she'd sure as hell never look for me. But I guess as long as I knew she was alive, there would be a chance that… maybe I'd stop being so pissed or that she'd give me a second chance or something. Now…" she sighed, but didn't finish her sentence.

"First of all," Lee said propping himself up on one elbow, "You aren't the one who needed a second chance. You weren't the one making the mistakes." He took his free hand and turned her left hand over on her belly and traced the light scars that most people assumed were the regular folds of her palm, but that he knew were scars from a burn. "You were a kid, Kara. She had no right to do the things she did to you. You had nothing to apologize for."

"Who said anything about apologizing?" she snapped.

"You didn't have to. You've always thought everything was your fault. Whether it was or not, you've always been willing to take the blame."

She was glaring at him now, her eyes burning even in the low light.

"Look, maybe there's a reason we don't discuss this very much. For reasons I will never understand, you always want to defend her, and I can't find one damn thing in anything you've told me that makes her redeemable." Lee collapsed off his elbow, reaching for her hand, hoping to calm them both before a screaming match started. It had happened before and he didn't have the energy for one now.

"She was my mother, Lee." Kara's voice was flat now, shutting him back out.

"I know. It just seems that the only good thing she ever did was bring you into the world. Just based on what you've said, it seems like she screwed up everything from there on out."

Kara looked at him from the corner of her eye. "I don't know, Lee. I guess when I was fifteen I would have agreed with you, but now… Maybe she had her reasons." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm just saying that I'll never know now."

Lee met her eyes and nodded. "I know. I think we all have a lot of unresolved stuff to go through. And I don't mean to be curt, I really don't. Whenever you want to talk, you know I'm here. Right?"

She sniffled. "Yeah. Thanks."

Lee held his arm up, inviting her into a hug without getting into her space uninvited, not quite sure if she was truly angry, exasperated or just tired. She rolled into him, her arm going around his ribs, squeezing him tight. When she pulled back, she left her arm around him. "I'm sorry I'm such a headcase. I know I'm keeping you up. If you want to grab another rack so my neuroses don't keep you up, I'd understand."

Lee gently stroked the arm she'd left around him, subtly indicating how much she was telegraphing her need for his presence. "You're not a headcase. No more than anyone else in the fleet. And I don't want to grab a different bed. We're both awake – I think the stims may still be screwing with us."

Kara nodded, "It wouldn't surprise me. I frakking hate those things."

"So you said, loudly," Lee reminded her.

"Yeah. Sorry about that little display in the hangar bay. If it makes you feel any better, I was so punch drunk by that time that I forgot that they weren't the chewable vitamin tabs they'd been plying us with and I chewed the damn things. Talk about truly disgusting."

Lee smiled. "Nice going. And for what it's worth, you did have a point about the way I'm handling the pilots. I have no idea how to do this. If you think you can do it without chewing my ass out in public, I'd appreciate any help you can give me with them."

"Very subtle, Captain." Kara giggled.

"Subtle?" Lee looked genuinely confused.

"Reminding me that, you know, you're the CAG and that I need to knock off the insubordinate shit. All that and still managing not to make it sound like an actual reprimand." Kara raised her eyebrows, daring him to contradict her.

"Well, I am the CAG and you should knock off the insubordinate shit, but that really wasn't what I was going for," he allowed. His hand was still trailing up and down the inside of the arm she had around him. "Ask you something?" he questioned, clearly trying to change the subject.

"I suppose," she said nervously. When Lee prefaced a question with her it was probably going somewhere uncomfortable.

His index finger traced the letters just under her elbow. "When did you get this? And… what the hell does it say?"

Kara pulled her arm back and flopped over onto the side of the pillow Lee wasn't using. "You really want to get into this now?"

"What?"

"I got it about two years ago," she told him, still not looking at him, letting him figure it out for himself.

"Tell me," he said quietly, turning on his side to look at her and gauge how far he should push her on this one.

Kara sighed and crossed her arms, hiding the tattoo in question. "They gave me a week of bereavement leave after the funeral. I think mostly they didn't want me to be around for the investigation or the inquiry. I'd given my statement and they said they'd contact me if there was anything else they needed."

Lee nodded, he remembered that he'd gotten five days and the two of them had stayed at his parents' house, even as uncomfortable as they all were around each other.

"When I got back everyone was walking on eggshells around me. I know I was never the most congenial person Flight School's ever seen, but I can about imagine how impossible I must have been between the time I came back from leave and the time I transferred to the Galactica about a month later. Anyway, a few of my friends thought it would be a good idea if I actually left my quarters for more than classes and an occasional routine patrol over Caprica City. So they took me out drinking one night."

Lee closed his eyes. He had the distinct feeling this wouldn't end well. Kara got belligerent when drunk and she was starting out from perpetually pissed. "And the tattoo figures in where?" he asked when she didn't finish the story.

"There were about seven of us when we left the base. My friend Erin went with us, but her boyfriend couldn't make it. I think he pulled a patrol or something. So anyway, we went to Gremlin's and everyone in the group decided they needed to buy me a drink. Actually, we were all buying each other drinks and inside of an hour we were pretty drunk. At one point one of the guys with us – I think his callsign was Dogface and it was pretty appropriate - said something to Erin about going out without her boyfriend and she said that she didn't belong to him and that she could do whatever she wanted to. As ass-drunk as I was I told him, her and everyone else in the bar that I didn't belong to anyone anymore either. At which point Dogface yelled out that the women he was hanging out with didn't belong to anyone, so we were all public property. I found that pretty funny. Erin was from Tauran, and her family actually spoke one of the original Tauran dialects, which made 'public property' sound even funnier. At that point the word 'fork' would have sounded funny to me, so…"

Lee's eyes grew wide. "Why do I have a feeling I can figure out the rest of this myself? About a block south of Gremlin's – between the bar and the academy – was that place… damn, what was it called?"

"Expressions," Kara filled in the name of the body art place most of the pilots preferred.

Lee coughed trying to hide his laugh. He wasn't sure if he should find it that funny. "So you're telling me you have a tattoo on your arm that says 'public property' in an obscure Tauran language."

"Pretty stupid thing to do, eh?" She actually seemed embarrassed now and Lee regretted laughing.

"Why didn't you have it removed?" he asked instead of directly answering her question.

"Because no one up here knows what it means. Or if they do they aren't dumb enough to say anything to me. And _most_ of the time, when I feel like getting drunk and doing something stupid, I see it and think twice. _Most_ of the time."

"Didn't work too well the day before I got here, did it?" he teased lightly.

"I was completely sober when I hit Tigh," was her only defense.

"That makes it _much_ better," Lee said sarcastically.

"Hey, I've been busted for drunk and disorderly. This time… this time I was just disorderly." She shrugged and raised her eyebrows in a clear, "whatever" expression.

"There really is nothing new under the sun," Lee muttered, giving up on trying to sound cross with her.

"Hey, seriously," she leaned up and over Lee until he was forced to roll onto his back and she could prop herself up on her elbow on his chest. "Would you really want me to be as boring as-" she cut herself off and cleared her throat.

"As me," he finished for her, but with humor in his voice.

Kara grinned at him. "You have to admit, you are a little uptight. I can't imagine you ever getting a tattoo, or getting drunk or-"

"I've been drunk!" he corrected defensively.

"Oh that's right. When we got our wings. You had like three drinks and passed out."

Lee poked her in the ribs, making her jump. "You are never going to let me live that down are you? We'd been up for four days cramming for the written final and had three practical tests that were designed to push us to our limits. Yes. I was tired."

"You didn't have to drag you back to the dorms," she teased him and then acted on the impulse to lean up and kiss him on the nose.

Lee grabbed her head as she pulled away and redirected her head and kissed her in earnest. "I can act on my impulses," he whispered.

Kara licked her lips, her eyes huge. "Yeah. I can see that." She stayed frozen where she was, half laying on him, her face only inches from his.

"Should I not have done that?" Lee asked after a few strained moments.

Kara shook her head. "You don't hear me complaining, do you?"

"I just wanted to prove I could think on my feet."

Kara propped her weight up over his chest on her left arm, leaving her right free to trace down his side to his ass. "I don't think that's the part of your body you were thinking with there, hotshot," she said seductively.

"Oh boy," Lee said quietly, reaching down to disengage her hand. "Kara –"

She rolled away and Lee could see the tension in her. He could barely hear her whisper, "And I thought it was girls who were supposed to have issues with sending mixed signals."

Lee pressed against her back, taking one of her hands in his. He kissed the back of her neck. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Kara. I didn't mean to start something I couldn't finish."

"It's all right," she said automatically, but Lee could hear the hurt in her voice. She'd been so open and vulnerable to him since he'd found her in the bathroom. He hadn't realized how badly this rejection would sting her.

"I understand," she was saying and he could have sworn there were tears in her voice. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that she was as tired as he was.

"No, you don't. I'm not saying 'no'."

Kara turned her head to glare at him, incredulously.

Lee squeezed her hand. "I'm saying 'not right now.' 'Not tonight.' We're both exhausted and we're feeling so incredibly raw, that it seems like a good idea now, but personally, I don't trust my own judgment right now. Talk to me again when I'm not full of chemicals and chronically sleep deprived." He leaned over and kissed her lightly and then lay his head right near her ear and whispered. "I'm honestly not sure I _could_ right now. You know? My body and I are not exactly on speaking terms right now."

He watched as her hand went up to her mouth and he could feel her body shaking. He couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. "Talk to me, Kara, please."

She turned towards him and he realized she'd been giggling much as she had on the hangar deck. "I'm so sorry. You're right. If I flipped out like that, I'm way, way too tired to be thinking about…" she let the thought hang, giggling again.

"You're laughing at me," he pouted childishly, but he couldn't keep the face for long and started laughing with her.

"How can I not? The great Apollo just told me he couldn't get it up." She dissolved into hysterics at that point.

"Glad to amuse you with my little problem," he snarked, poking her in the side.

"Oh, so it's just a little problem, huh? Well, maybe it's better if we don't then. Don't want to have reality screw with all my fantasies." She was holding her side now, she was laughing so hard.

"You are such a pervert!" Lee accused. "Catch me when I'm wide awake and we'll see how 'little' a problem it is."

"Promise?" she asked, suddenly sober, meeting his eyes with something of a challenge.

Lee pulled her in close. "I never said 'never'. I said 'not tonight,' right?" He pulled her in for a deep kiss.

"I'll remember that," she told him quietly.

"You do that," he said as quietly.

She settled down with her head on his chest, almost exactly the way she'd fallen asleep the first time that night. "You mind?"

"Not at all," he said wrapping his arms around her.

"Good."

Lee caressed her hair, and leaned up enough to kiss the top of her head. "Ready to go back to sleep now?"

"Mm-hm,"

"Good night." He stayed awake a few minutes longer. There was actually a lot for them to talk about before they could seriously consider… becoming serious. They both needed to be sure they'd gotten past Zak, that she wasn't substituting him for his brother and that he was sure of that. They needed to deal with the rank issue. And after tomorrow, when the squads got consolidated, they'd have problems finding a place to be alone, though if he thought about it, they'd both served on Battlestars long enough to know where the unused corridors and seldom visited storerooms were.

But those were tomorrow's worries. Right now he was reasonably confident that the stims had finally given up on him. Kara's breathing was already deep and even against his chest, and it was entirely too easy to stop thinking about the end of the world for long enough to fall asleep.

**Sleeping alone, except under doctor's orders, does much harm. Children will tell you how lonely it is sleeping alone. If possible, you should always sleep with someone you love. You both recharge your mutual batteries free of charge. **

_**--Marlene Dietrich's ABC, 1962**_


End file.
